Sochi 2014: David Murdoch craving curling gold

Team GB skip David Murdoch sends down another stone on the way to victory. Picture: PA

JAMES TONEY IN SOCHI

SOMETIMES fate is a stronger force than anything else in sport and David Murdoch is hoping that fate is finally on his side.

After two disappointments, missing out on a medal by ­millimetres in Turin and flattering to deceive four years ago in Vancouver, Murdoch thought his Olympic dream was dead.

The Lockerbie man fell out of love with ­curling, got injured, stopped playing and thought about doing something else.

But last night he booked his place in the Olympic curling final, guaranteeing at least silver alongside his youthful rink of Greg Drummond, Scott Andrews and Michael Goodfellow, and thereby securing a third medal for Great Britain in Sochi – making this their most successful Games since 1936.

Two-time world champion Murdoch kept a cool head as the tension increased in a ­dramatic semi-final against ­Sweden’s reigning world champion skip Niklas Edin. He started the final end down one but outsmarted his rival, who blew his late chance for a takeout to give Murdoch what he described as a regulation shot to secure a 6-5 win. “I hope it’s our time,” he said. “The curling gods have been looking down on me this week and it makes a change. We have to go out there with confidence and no fear, go for it and believe it.

“That’s a reward for 12 years of dedicating yourself to a sport, to beat your body up, go through injuries and train hard and make sacrifices. After all that time, I’ve proved it pays off. Having the experience of the near-misses in Turin and Vancouver has helped me keep my head and settle my play. This team believes in itself, I can’t believe the confidence we have, and now we’re in the Olympic final.

“I want the gold, you get this opportunity once in a lifetime and it’s up to us to seize the day and make some incredible history. I’m delighted at getting the medal I’ve worked so long for but we want the gold now and we’ll be pushing everything to get that.”

Murdoch paid tribute to his Swedish coach, Soren Gran, for giving him the motivation to rediscover his love for the sport and commit to a third Olympic campaign.

Canada – skipped by Brad Jacobs – will certainly start favourites in the final, especially after they dominated China 10-6 to book their progress. But Murdoch claims he and his rink have nothing to lose, while his rival plays under the groaning weight of national expectation.

“After Vancouver I thought that was it and I’d never get back,” he admitted. “You don’t get the chances to get to the Olympics very often.

“I went off the boil and my head wasn’t in it because I thought Vancouver was my chance. Then I got a bad shoulder injury and I honestly thought that was me done.

“But credit to my coach Soren Gran, he changed the course of my life and I moved to Stirling to train full-time and I’ve practised harder than I’ve ever done in my life.”

It wasn’t such a rewarding day for Eve Muirhead, but she vowed to bounce back and secure Olympic bronze after the GB women’s curling semi-final defeat to Jennifer Jones and her unbeaten Canadian rink.

Muirhead, alongside Anna Sloan, Vicki Adams and Claire Hamilton, had a nightmare start after some debris on the ice forced her stone to pick, meaning she surrendered a soft two that gave Jones a flying start.

Canada made their advantage count, though the match wasn’t decided until the final stone, Jones securing a final with Sweden, while Muirhead’s rink now play Mirjam Ott’s Switzerland for bronze this morning.

The world champion said: “I am gutted and so are all the girls. I came into this tournament saying I wanted no regrets and we gave everything we could in that game. That pick up in the first end was brutal and losing a two off the bat from something you can’t control against Canada, it was going to be tough. There is nothing you can do when you get debris on the ice.

“We’ve still got a chance of a medal. I don’t want to come away without a medal around my neck. We played well as a team out there and we gave it everything. We can’t be too harsh on ourselves, we’re a young team and countries know we are here now.”

Coach David Hay backed them to bounce back and win Britain’s first women’s curling medal since Rhona Howie’s gold in Salt Lake City 12 years ago.

He said: “The first thing they said afterwards is ‘we’re going to get that bronze now’.”

This website and its associated newspaper adheres to the Independent Press Standards Organisation's Editors' Code of Practice.
If you have a complaint about editorial content which relates to inaccuracy or intrusion, then contact the
Editor by clicking here.

If you remain dissatisfied with the response provided then you can contact the IPSO by
clicking here.

The Scotsman provides news, events and sport features from the Edinburgh area. For the best up to date information relating to Edinburgh and the surrounding areas visit us at The Scotsman regularly or bookmark this page.

For you to enjoy all the features of this website The Scotsman requires permission to use cookies.

Find Out More ▼

What is a Cookie?

What is a Flash Cookie?

Can I opt out of receiving Cookies?

About our Cookies

Cookies are small data files which are sent to your browser (Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome etc) from a website you visit. They are stored on your electronic device.

This is a type of cookie which is collected by Adobe Flash media player (it is also called a Local Shared Object) - a piece of software you may already have on your electronic device to help you watch online videos and listen to podcasts.

Yes there are a number of options available, you can set your browser either to reject all cookies, to allow only "trusted" sites to set them, or to only accept them from the site you are currently on.

However, please note - if you block/delete all cookies, some features of our websites, such as remembering your login details, or the site branding for your local newspaper may not function as a result.

The types of cookies we, our ad network and technology partners use are listed below:

Revenue Science ►

A tool used by some of our advertisers to target adverts to you based on pages you have visited in the past. To opt out of this type of targeting you can visit the 'Your Online Choices' website by clicking here.

Google Ads ►

Our sites contain advertising from Google; these use cookies to ensure you get adverts relevant to you. You can tailor the type of ads you receive by visiting here or to opt out of this type of targeting you can visit the 'Your Online Choices' website by clicking here.

Digital Analytics ►

This is used to help us identify unique visitors to our websites. This data is anonymous and we cannot use this to uniquely identify individuals and their usage of the sites.

Dart for Publishers ►

This comes from our ad serving technology and is used to track how many times you have seen a particular ad on our sites, so that you don't just see one advert but an even spread. This information is not used by us for any other type of audience recording or monitoring.

ComScore ►

ComScore monitor and externally verify our site traffic data for use within the advertising industry. Any data collected is anonymous statistical data and cannot be traced back to an individual.

Local Targeting ►

Our Classified websites (Photos, Motors, Jobs and Property Today) use cookies to ensure you get the correct local newspaper branding and content when you visit them. These cookies store no personally identifiable information.

Grapeshot ►

We use Grapeshot as a contextual targeting technology, allowing us to create custom groups of stories outside out of our usual site navigation. Grapeshot stores the categories of story you have been exposed to. Their privacy policy and opt out option can be accessed here.

Subscriptions Online ►

Our partner for Newspaper subscriptions online stores data from the forms you complete in these to increase the usability of the site and enhance user experience.

Add This ►

Add This provides the social networking widget found in many of our pages. This widget gives you the tools to bookmark our websites, blog, share, tweet and email our content to a friend.